Starter distillate

Starter distillate is a concentrated butter flavour, the volatile fraction distilled off cultured milk. It is how margarine and many processed foods get a butter note.

Where it is and isn’t permitted

Status of Starter distillate by jurisdiction. Every jurisdiction this site covers is listed, including those where the substance does not appear.
JurisdictionStatusScope and limitsCitation
United StatesFood and Drug AdministrationPermitted21 CFR 184.1848retrieved 2026-09-07
Codex AlimentariusCodex Alimentarius Commission / JECFANot listedDoes not appear on this jurisdiction’s permitted list. That is not the same as being prohibited.

What it is made from

Distilled from a milk culture fermented with the same bacteria used for cultured butter. The starting material is dairy.

  • Not vegan
  • Vegetarian
  • May raise a kosher question

Every name it appears under

1 recorded name. A label may use any of them.

As it appears in regulation

  • Starter distillate

Hazard reference values

No reference value for this substance in the sources we hold.

Evidence and how bodies read it

Studies, and the differing conclusions regulators drew from them, are curated by hand rather than machine-read, and none has been written for this substance yet.

Sources for this page

  • ecfr retrieved 2026-09-07

Full licence terms and publisher details on Sources. How this page is built and updated: Method.

Machine-readable:/api/v1/additives/starter-distillate.json